By Raffique Shah
August 08, 2022
Continuing where I ended last Sunday, by the turn of the millennium and the century, the Opposition United National Congress had positioned itself to capitalise on the vulnerabilities of the People’s National Movement, which had been weakened by the mass movement of 1970 (Black Power) that was driven largely by the children and grandchildren of the PNM.
Continue reading An unforgiving electorate
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 01, 2022
PART III
On Friday, July 21, 2021, around 1.30 p.m., PM Keith Rowley was preparing for his golf game when a senior golf services coordinator sustained an ankle injury from a golf cart he was driving. Nothing untoward seems to have happened to the woman. An hour later, Rowley confirmed, “While I was playing golf I heard from my lawyer that the woman was taken to the hospital, was checked out and cleared to go… Nobody was ‘run over’.” (Express, October 27, 2021).
Continue reading Keith Rowley’s failed leadership
By Raffique Shah
August 01, 2022
I do not believe the people of Trinidad and Tobago, least of all those whose votes matter in a near-evenly-divided electorate, are ready for a leader who has the fortitude to take the resource-rich though now declining economy out of the cycles of poverty, stagnation and prosperity, to put it firmly on track such that it steers as close as is possible to an equitable distribution of its wealth—or suffering—and in the painful process deliver us from the evils of free-wheeling capitalism and neo-liberalism that coagulates into one of the filthy-rich, dirt-poor extremities that are imploding across the world, their populations equally stripped of all hope as ours is, the only difference being this time we go down with the ship since there are no alternative options.
Continue reading Let’s try ah madman instead
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 25, 2022
PART I — PART II
The Hatter asks Alice: “Why is a bird like a desk?”
Alice was pleased. She enjoyed playing word games, so she said, “That’s an easy question.”
“Do you mean you know the answer?” said the March Hare.
“Yes,” said Alice.
“Then you must say what you mean,” the March Hare said.
“I do,” Alice said quickly. “Well, I mean what I say. And that’s the same thing, you know.”
“No, it isn’t!” said the Hatter.
—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
On April 21, 2022, the prime minister commented on the close to 20 murders that took place while he was in Barbados. Asked if T&T was losing its fight against crime, the PM responded: “I don’t notice anybody running away from the fact that we are a violent society and in recent years a number of persons have gotten their hands on firearms, handguns in particular.” (Express, April 22.)
Continue reading Keith Rowley’s Failed Leadership
By Raffique Shah
July 25, 2022
Nothing defined the great dividing line in this country the way the Law Association lawyers’ motion to have Attorney General Reginald Armour resign from office did when it came before the legal fraternity two weeks ago.
As people with an iota of common sense will have noted, while there was an element of race in the proceedings, it was not the only, or even the main factor that drove the campaign to oust the AG. It was all political—a straight case of who in the profession supported the incumbent PNM Government, or who supported the Opposition UNC. The stench of politics in what can be said to have been a minor confrontation was overpowering.
Continue reading Circling like corbeaux
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 18, 2022
PART I
Why boaseth thyself, oh evil man
Playing smart and not being clever.—“Small Axe” by Bob Marley
As I listened to a recent message that Mother Bernie sent to Keith Rowley, I appreciated anew why Eric Williams paid so much attention to the wisdom of the leaders of the Spiritual Baptist faith. In her tour de force, she informed Rowley of some truths about leadership that laid bare his shortcomings as our political leader.
Continue reading Keith Rowley’s Failed Leadership
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 11, 2022
PART III
It was a hot July day in the late 1990s when I received a call from a young man, full of enthusiasm, who wanted to make a difference in the lives of young people. He wanted me to address the members of an organisation he led. His name was Foster Cummings. I have never forgotten the devotion he applied to what he was doing.
Continue reading The politics of redemption
By Raffique Shah
July 11, 2022
Many moons ago, when I was young, idealistic and very much a utopian dreamer, I had a vision for a new Beetham community. It will have formed in the early 1960s when I first travelled to Port of Spain frequently.
The route the taxis used from Chaguanas was the relatively new Princess Margaret Highway (commissioned in 1954, I think), turning west onto the Churchill-Roosevelt (built by the US armed forces in 1941 to service the largest air force base in this part of the world, Fort Read in Wallerfield, and used exclusively by military vehicles until it was handed over to the local authorities in 1949). The CRH ended at Barataria. From that point, before the Beetham Highway was opened in ’56, all traffic to PoS had to return to the Eastern Main Road to access PoS.
Continue reading Beetham: man vs corbeaux
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 04, 2022
We must never forget that there is something within human nature that can respond to goodness, that man is not totally depraved; to put it in theological terms, the image of God is never totally gone.
—Martin Luther King, Jr, A Testament of Hope
PART II
I had hoped to write about another aspect of the Foster Cummings debate, but other questions arose since last week which means I have to clear a lot of ground before I continue these observations.
Reading (or the explication of texts) is not so easy as many people believe it to be. A theologian goes to theology school to learn how to interpret theological texts (we call it exegesis). The lawyer goes to law school to learn how to read legal texts (whether the original intention or from a contemporary setting). Literary scholars go to graduate school to learn the most fortuitous way to examine literary texts.
Continue reading The politics of redemption
By Stephen Kangal
July 03, 2022
Primary students write an annual competitive SEA Examination that determines, inter alia, where the students are to receive their best secondary schooling of choice to foster their academic development and their career paths.
These results have been published since its inception.
First the PNM interfered with the CAPE scholarships criteria by cutting down the number and even tinkering with the allocation based on subjectivity.
Continue reading SEA Results Must be Published